Bright Future scheduled for Finishing Company

TW Bayston Limited, a surface finishing partner to the automotive, industrial and high technology industries, has now implemented a Preactor APS advanced scheduling tool at its 32,000 square feet Cheltenham, UK factory.

"The new Preactor system replaces a system which we had outgrown, " comments John Bayston, Financial Director. "It's all part of an on-going drive to improve overall efficiencies and to achieve World Class benchmarking and delivery standards."

TW Bayston was established in 1945, is an ISO9002 and QS-9000 registered company, and now has over 50 employees. The company undertakes a complex and extensive mix of activities. These include electroplating, electrophoretic painting, chemical conversion coatings, shot blasting, JIT servicing, assisting OEMs in process design and providing other value-added operations.

"Trying to accommodate this complexity of variables and requirements was a real scheduling challenge," continues John Bayston. "Our previous system saw us struggling to change printed schedules hourly and was a 'reactive' only system."

"This led to a number of efficiency weaknesses. It was difficult to use customer scheduled information. There was inefficient machine utilisation and resource management. Work load was difficult to evaluate and there were short, medium and long term planning problems."

This has all changed now, concludes John Bayston . "But Preactor has now provided us with a way to improve efficiencies," he says. "It's enabled us to better utilise our existing computer system, reduce paper work, simplify procedures and address the need to move away from a spot order system by facilitating customer partnerships."

"We now have more efficient machine/process utilisation, better planning of resources and a clearer picture of current and future work loads. We can also use customer scheduled information."